Famous Modern Ghost Stories eBook

“We’d better get off sharp in an hour,”
I said presently, feeling for an opening that must
bring him indirectly to a partial confession at any
rate. And his answer puzzled me uncomfortably:
“Rather! If they’ll let us.”

“The powers of this awful place, whoever they
are,” he replied, keeping his eyes on the map.
“The gods are here, if they are anywhere at all
in the world.”

“The elements are always the true immortals,”
I replied, laughing as naturally as I could manage,
yet knowing quite well that my face reflected my true
feelings when he looked up gravely at me and spoke
across the smoke:

“We shall be fortunate if we get away without
further disaster.”

This was exactly what I had dreaded, and I screwed
myself up to the point of the direct question.
It was like agreeing to allow the dentist to extract
the tooth; it had to come anyhow in the long
run, and the rest was all pretense.

“Further disaster! Why, what’s happened?”

“For one thing—­the steering paddle’s
gone,” he said quietly.

“The steering paddle gone!” I repeated,
greatly excited, for this was our rudder, and the
Danube in flood without a rudder was suicide.
“But what——­”

“And there’s a tear in the bottom of the
canoe,” he added, with a genuine little tremor
in his voice.

I continued staring at him, able only to repeat the
words in his face somewhat foolishly. There,
in the heat of the sun, and on this burning sand,
I was aware of a freezing atmosphere descending round
us. I got up to follow him, for he merely nodded
his head gravely and led the way towards the tent
a few yards on the other side of the fireplace.
The canoe still lay there as I had last seen her in
the night, ribs uppermost, the paddles, or rather,
the paddle, on the sand beside her.

“There’s only one,” he said, stooping
to pick it up. “And here’s the rent
in the base-board.”

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him that I
had clearly noticed two paddles a few hours
before, but a second impulse made me think better
of it, and I said nothing. I approached to see.

There was a long, finely made tear in the bottom of
the canoe where a little slither of wood had been
neatly taken clean out; it looked as if the tooth
of a sharp rock or snag had eaten down her length,
and investigation showed that the hole went through.
Had we launched out in her without observing it we
must inevitably have foundered. At first the
water would have made the wood swell so as to close
the hole, but once out in midstream the water must
have poured in, and the canoe, never more than two
inches above the surface, would have filled and sunk
very rapidly.

“There, you see, an attempt to prepare a victim
for the sacrifice,” I heard him saying, more
to himself than to me, “two victims rather,”
he added as he bent over and ran his fingers along
the slit.